The mayoral campaign entered a new phase Wednesday, as Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel began positioning themselves for the May 21 runoff. The fellow Democrats fought over who can best craft an image of fiscal restraint in a cash-strapped city whose voters refused to raise taxes to maintain public services. Check out a map by the Los Angeles Times' Data Desk to see how various parts of the city voted. The candidates spent the day after the election moving around the city.

Haiti is locked in a political crisis that threatens to further stall recovery from the devastating earthquake of a year ago and could swiftly turn violent. Seven weeks after a flawed presidential election, President Rene Preval is resisting an international panel's recommendation that his handpicked candidate be removed from a runoff, according to diplomatic sources. Preval also is saying he intends to remain in office beyond his term. Haiti desperately needs to seat a new government to move ahead in the reconstruction of its quake-ravaged capital, where hundreds of thousands of people languish in vast tent cities, and to improve the disbursement of aid money, analysts say. The core of the dispute now is over which candidates qualify for the runoff to the Nov. 28 vote and whether fraud was so extensive that the entire process should be discarded and done over.

Tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, pressing for a presidential runoff but celebrating an agreement giving the opposition more control over the main state-funded television station. The justice minister said that protesters disputing the Jan. 5 vote's outcome would not be silenced, and that police who dispersed November rallies with clubs and tear gas were not properly trained. Mikheil Saakashvili's inauguration for a second term is expected next week.

The two candidates who earned a spot in the runoff to be Los Angeles' next mayor have little time to savor their victory. Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti must immediately start raising money , because unlike in state and federal elections, they were prohibited for raising money for the general election during the primary. And they weren't allowed to reserve any of the millions of dollars they raised in the primary for the runoff, meaning the candidates started raising new funds within hours of the polls closing Tuesday.

After a whirlwind, blistering race to replace a disgraced former state legislator, Orange County Supervisor Chris Norby came in first among five candidates Tuesday but fell short of the majority needed to avoid a runoff. In the special election for the 72nd Assembly District seat, Norby jumped to an early lead over fellow Republicans -- longtime party activist Linda Ackerman and political newcomer Richard Faher -- Democrat John MacMurray and Jane Rands of the Green Party. From the outset, the race in the GOP stronghold was viewed as a showdown between Norby, 59, and Ackerman, 65, a member of the Metropolitan Water District board and the wife of former Republican legislative leader Dick Ackerman.

Precipitation and runoff in California's major river basin will not fall dramatically with climate change, according to a new federal study that shows rising temperatures will have an uneven effect on the West's water supplies. A Department of Interior report released Monday agrees with other analyses that have found climate models are better at predicting temperature rises and an accompanying decline in spring snowpack than they are in projecting future precipitation and stream flow levels.

SAN DIEGO - In early returns Tuesday, San Diego Councilman Kevin Faulconer appeared headed for a runoff election with either former Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher or Councilman David Alvarez to succeed the disgraced Bob Filner as mayor. While Faulconer, 46, the only Republican among the major candidates, had a sizable lead, he appeared to lack the 50% plus one vote needed to win the job without a runoff. Fletcher, 36, was narrowly ahead of Alvarez, 33, a fellow Democrat. A third Democrat, former San Diego City Atty.

Afghanistan's runoff presidential campaign formally opened today with an ominous repeat from the first round: Taliban threats to disrupt the vote. "If anyone finds themselves injured taking part in this dirty process, they have only themselves to blame," the insurgent movement said in a statement posted on its Pashtu-language website. It also denounced the election two weeks from now as a foreign-orchestrated sham. The original Aug. 20 balloting, Afghanistan's second-ever direct presidential election, was marked by violence, mainly scattered on voting day itself but preceded by several weeks of concerted attacks, including major bombings in the capital, Kabul.

A tough-on-crime former army general headed for a runoff against a populist congressman in the race to become Guatemala's next president as vote counting neared completion Monday. With more than 98% of precincts counted from Sunday's vote, Otto Perez Molina held a double-digit lead over Manuel Baldizon, 36% to 23%, but lacked a majority needed to avoid a second round on Nov. 6. Perez Molina, 60, who led troops against leftist guerrillas during Guatemala's 35-year civil war, went into the voting as the front-runner among 10 candidates.

Attorney and businessman Ron Galperin and City Councilman Dennis Zine headed into the runoff for Los Angeles city controller in a virtual tie, with both on Wednesday claiming the advantage in the race ahead. With thousands of ballots remaining to be counted, Galperin led Zine in unofficial election-night returns by 239 votes, 37.12% to 37.03%. Four other candidates were far back in the field, with the third-place finisher taking only 9.7% of the vote. Noting that Zine had spent twice as much on his campaign, Galperin, 49, took his narrow first-place finish as a sign that "voters responded to what we had to say. " He said that Zine's spending just above $1 million to finish second "shows people are sick of the same politicians.